


>Dave: Proposition Him

by frenchifries



Series: Future Brite [1]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Backrubs, M/M, Massage, Xenobiology
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-20
Updated: 2016-12-20
Packaged: 2018-09-10 16:54:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,594
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8924818
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/frenchifries/pseuds/frenchifries
Summary: He says it so resigned, like he’s never not been in pain, and god, why does that thought do things to you? (You want to help him, and hold him, and make sure he never hurts again.)
orthat awkward early phase of the relationship where you're not sure how much of an asshole you're allowed to be.





	

“Are you okay, dude?”

You’re sprawled on the floor in one of the many weird out-of-the-way rooms of the lab. It’s mostly empty except for some monitors and machinery lining the walls, thick cords hanging from the ceiling, dark if not for the green-blue glow of screens and blinking lights. Karkat had agreed to check out the massive dead dragonfly-thing you found in some back corridor (massive for, like, a dragonfly you guess), but got tired on the way back and insisted on taking a break. So now you’re here, swiping through the photos on your phone—oh man, there are some good ones you got of Karkat when he wasn’t looking, fuck he would be so mad if he saw those—and he’s hunched over his crabtop making this weirdly contorted face.

He doesn’t say anything. Maybe he didn’t hear you. You scoot over and pat him on the back and he fucking _hisses_.

“Oh jeez, uh, sorry. Shit. I know. Warn before touching, sorry. Sorry.”

“No!” he snaps, grabbing you by the wrist before you can get away. “I mean, it’s not… You’re fine, I just…”

He lets go of you, sort of twists from side to side, wincing and gnashing his teeth. It strikes you as a defensive gesture, a wounded animal baring its fangs.

“Sorry,” he grumbles. “It’s my…”

The way his eyes keep darting away is weirdly shy, or maybe just… careful? Like he’s not sure he should trust you. He bites his lip and sighs.

“It’s my back, don’t worry about it. It happens sometimes. It’ll go away on its own.”

He says it so resigned, like he’s never not been in pain, and god, why does that thought _do things_ to you? (You want to help him, and hold him, and make sure he never hurts again.)

The words “Do you want me to rub your back?” are out of your mouth before you can think, _hey dipshit youve never given anyone a massage in your fucking life what makes you think this is a good idea??_

“What?” He flushes hard. _Oh_ , oh god, you just pale propositioned him, didn’t you?

“I mean, we don’t, that’s not, I just thought, if it’ll help, you know, but like I get it if you’re not—”

“No, no, it might. Uh. Help.” He’s gnawing his lip again (with that cute crooked overbite, god you just wanna wrap him up in a blanket, ugh _how_ does he _do_ that to you?). “I just never, um. Did anything like that.”

And christ if that isn’t some anime shit right there, him blushing up at you through his bangs, practically saying _oh be gentle dave-senpai its my first time_ —how are you supposed to _live_ like this?

“Oh,” is all you can say at first because your mouth is awfully dry for some reason. “Okay, cool, yeah. So do you wanna, like…” You make a twirling gesture with your hand, and he turns his back to you, still watching you from the corner of his eye.

(Poor guy probably spent his whole life never feeling safe turning his back on anyone, of _course_ he’s never had a massage, nobody’s ever been good enough to get close to him like this until— _until you_ , fuck, the weight of that thought is something you’ll have to deal with later.)

He clears his throat.

“Alright, let’s get this over with.”

Okay, okay, you can work with that tone, that tone is way easier to deal with than… than the things you are decidedly _not_ thinking about right now.

“Wow,” you say. “Way to make _me_ sound like the asshole when I’m the one doing you a favor here.”

He growls. “Dave, if you don’t want to be doing this—”

“If _you_ don’t want me to be doing this, just say so.”

Shit. Was that too mean? He has to know you’re just messing with him, that's just how you are to each other. The rules aren't different now that you're sort-of-dating or whatever this is… right? Are you allowed to say shit like that, or are you actually going to hurt his feelings, or—

“Just get over here, dumbass.” You can’t see his eyes but you can tell he’s rolling them by the movement of his head. This kid has no concept of subtlety, does he?

“Alright. Okay. Yeah. Time to, uh.”

Your hands hover awkwardly, not sure where to start. You thought you were getting better at this whole ‘touching other people’ thing but suddenly there’s pressure on you to do this right and also not make it weird and oh god what were you thinking.

Breathing in deep, you place your hands between his shoulder blades and sort of… dig your thumbs in. That startles a sharp noise out of him.

“Oh. Was that… a good noise? Is that okay?”

“Yeah,” he nods. “That was. It’s fine. You can, uh. Keep going.”

So you dig your thumbs in again, press on either side of his spine—torso column, as he calls it. Another sound sticks in his throat, sort of a gasp-sigh-grunt. You drag your thumbs up to the knob of his neck and roll the bone under your knuckles.

“Jeez Karkat, you need to work on your posture,” you tell him, as if you don’t spend every waking moment hunched in on yourself like you want to disappear.

“Mmmngh,” is all he says instead of giving you shit like you rightly deserve. Damn, and you’ve hardly done anything yet.

Your fingers work their way back down his spine, pressing and rubbing in what you hope is the right way. It’s not like you’ve ever had a chance to try this before, but the added fact that Karkat is an alien makes it even more worrying. Like, shit, are there supposed to be ridges across his whole back like that? Are they—oh god, they’re moving, it’s like some flexible armor plating just under the muscle, isn’t it? You try a horizontal approach, then, spreading your palms flat and digging the heel of your hand along the ridges, and pray you’re not hurting him.

“ _Ohh, fuck._ ”

Yeah, okay, you’re pretty sure that was a decidedly _not_ pained sound. You laugh.

“Dude, your back is so weird. You’re like an armadillo under here.”

“Hmm,” he says. Then, once he processes your comment: “What kind of shitty earth creature anatomy are you comparing me to now? My back is perfectly normal, I’ll have you know. Not my fault humans are built so frail.”

“Yeah, yeah, superior warrior race and all that. I get it.” You huff amusedly against the back of his neck.

“Just… keep doing that.”

You do keep doing that, repeating the motion up to his shoulders, trying to spread and flatten the blades into an approximately healthier configuration—he hums at that, still tense and wary but hopefully getting better—then down again, fingers prodding along his ribs, which also feel like they’ve got some sort of thin, stretchy plating over them. It’s admittedly Pretty Freakin’ Neat if you say so yourself. You can’t see it through his sweater, but the feel of it reminds you of some of the dead bugs you would collect. Less like the hard glossy shell of a cockroach; more like the segmented thorax of a wasp. It occurs to you that trolls use insectoid terminology for a reason.

His torso is rumbling with some sort of primal noise by the time you’re approaching the lower back, and then… you frown. How far down are you going? Where’s the hard limit between ‘bro zone’ and ‘don’t you fucking dare’?

“Uhh, Karkat?”

“Mmm god why do you keep ruining this?”

“Sorry, it’s just. Uh.” Shit, what? It’s just what? _Where am I allowed to touch you_ seems like a weird thing to say, so you try: “This angle is kind of weird. Maybe if you lie down?”

He turns just enough to look at you then, and. Fuck, you wish your brain would stop screaming _oh no hes hot_ every time you see his face. The furrow of his brow has let up just a bit, his eyes are dark and heavy-lidded. Does he even realize he just threw you the most tempting pair of bedroom eyes this side of the Furthest Ring? Shit, no, forget you ever had that thought, what is wrong with you?

His eyes flit over your face and you’re trying really really hard to not betray any _untoward_ thoughts and also calm the roiling in your abdomen. Whatever he was trying to figure out, he seems satisfied.

“Fine. Yeah.” He gingerly moves to lie on his front, but hesitates partway through the motion. “Um… thanks,” he says quietly, staring at his hands.

And… you _could_ give him shit about that, joke about holding it over his head, but. But you’d rather keep the moment for what it is.

“No problem, man.”

And then he’s on the floor, belly-down, cheek pillowed on his folded arms. Still giving you that cautious side-eye. You can’t blame him for being a little wary when he’s making himself vulnerable like this, stirring some… unpleasantly _tender_ feelings in you.

It actually is a better angle, you weren’t making that up, though you do have to tuck your shades into your collar before they fall off. Perched at his side like this, you can put more weight into your palms, really dig your knuckles in there. He feels solid and hot and dense and real. You can also feel just how twisted and tense and absolutely _fucked_ his poor back is. You may not know what you’re doing, but there’s no way you can let a bro suffer with that for even a second longer, so you position the fleshy bases of your thumbs in the middle of his back and _push_.

“Oh!” he chokes out harshly. Fuck, fuck, that was bad, you recoil but he’s gasping out, “do that again oh god don’t you dare stop.”

“Sorry dude, it’s kind of hard to tell if I’m hurting you.”

“Dave, if you hurt me you will know because you won’t have hands anymore. I will bite your hands off. Is what I’m saying.”

“Okay, okay, jeez, isn’t there a saying about not biting the hand that, uh, massages you?”

Before that warning growl can become a more-than-warning growl, your hands are back on him, pressing full force into those pitiful muscles and tendons and other weird alien bits in weird alien arrangements that you don’t totally understand but are still pretty fascinated by. The low thrumming trill emitting from his chest is also pretty fascinating. So is the way it lowers in pitch the further up his back you go, a deep steady hum as you work the knots from between his shoulder blades. And when you go lower, smoothing the deep curve of his spine, knuckling over the jut of each vertebra, the sound gets higher, approximating something between a cicada and a teapot.

But when you finally dare to venture lower still, right around where the sacrum would be for a human—he fucking _groans_ into his arms, the sound is borderline pornographic and you’re pretty sure your intestines are throwing a quinceañera _holy shit holy fuck oh god oh no stop dave this is gay this is really really gay_

and you sort of

lean over and just

brush your lips over the base of his neck, feather light, soft enough that you could probably deny it if you needed to

and you press your nose into the fabric of his sweater and it smells like _Karkat_ , like soft dry peppery warmth, and his breath hitches and stops for a second and you know he’ll get mad if you stop massaging so you work your thumbs into that sacrum bit, roll over the protruding bones on either side, dig in hard because you know this must be where it hurts the worst, where the sweeps of stress and fear and bad posture have collected, and he grunts and groans and he’s slurring out,

“ _Yesss_ , thank you, oh my _god_ that’s, oh _fuck_ , hmmm…”

and your insides feel like they’re glowing, and he feels like he’s glowing, radiating heat under the pulse of your fingertips, the skin of his neck is _right there_ and it’s pulsing too and you kiss it again, bolder this time, you probably should have asked but he doesn’t seem to mind because he just sighs and hums and buries his face further into his arms.

The high-pitched chirring gets louder, doubling and overlaying itself with something lower and deeper and _fuck_ he can harmonize with himself that is the unfairest shit you’ve ever heard, you’re gonna have to sample that at some point, you wonder if he’ll let you. You wonder if he’ll let you take a picture of him like this. You wonder if he’ll let you lie down next to him and kiss his hair and kiss his mouth _where_ are these thoughts _coming from??_

But you… you want to, you kind of really really want to, so you stretch yourself out beside him, still running a hand over his lower back, and nose at his ear. One eye flutters open to look at you.

“Hey,” you whisper.

“Hey,” he says, voice thick and lazy through the cool bug noises.

“Um.” You want to ask, you should just ask, come on dude it’s fine if he says no so just _ask_ just _say it_ you coward, just, “Can I…”

You open and close your mouth like a dying fish for a second before just moving your face a little closer to his, hoping he understands the question.

His breath stutters and you can’t help but do the same.

“Yeah,” he says with effort after a moment. He shuts his eyes, nods, bumps his nose against yours. “Yeah.”

The way the word ghosts over your lips is enough to send your brain into static. You lean in those last few millimeters and pretty much just touch his mouth with your mouth and for a second that’s more than enough, more than you can handle, everything is pulsating white and red and you can feel the blood under the thin skin of his lips. And then he moves closer, tilts his head into yours, parts his lips enough to suck one of yours between them and now you’re the one making embarrassing noises.

He rolls your bottom lip under his teeth, slips a hand behind your head, thumb brushing behind your ear, rubbing the dent left by the arm of your shades. Your whole body shivers, involuntary warmth flooding every part of you.

“Oh my god,” you breathe against him, and pull him towards you. “Oh my god.” You’re trembling, stroking lazily at his back.

“What’s wrong?” His hand is on your face now. You shake your head.

“Nothing’s wrong, this is…” _Great, perfect, amazing,_ are all words that would probably be appropriate. Instead you just laugh.

“I know,” he says. Quiet, careful. “Thanks.”

“You already said that.”

He huffs.

“I’m trying to preserve the moment, asshole.”

You laugh again, bump your forehead against his.

“I know, sorry, you’re welcome. I guess I should thank you, too.”

“What?” He’s tracing the shell of your ear. “Why?”

“For, uh. For letting me.”

“Letting you?”

“I mean. I know it’s, like, hard for you. To do shit like this. To let people get close. And stuff.”

“And stuff.”

“Hey man, I’m trying to be all serious here, this isn’t easy for me, either, you know.”

It’s his turn to laugh at you.

“I know, you’re really bad at it.”

“Oh, was I ‘bad at it’ when I had you making those sounds?”

He flushes and furrows his brow.

“Keep up that talk and you won’t have a tongue anymore, either.”

“Ooh, are you gonna bite that off, too?” You waggle your eyebrows. “ _Ooh_ Mister Vantas, you know you can’t _say_ such things to a delicate southern lady such as mmph—”

Okay, fair, you’ll accept the hand planted over your mouth. Look, you’ll be good, you won’t even lick it. After what Karkat deems to be long enough, he retracts the hand.

“ _Anyway_ , what I was trying to say is… thank you. I mean, I know I already said that like four times but… that really did help. A lot. Fuck, Dave, I don’t know if I can go back to how it was before.”

“That’s the goal, bro. You don’t have to go back, because _I_ got your back.”

His eyes darken threateningly. You cough.

“I mean. For real, though. Whenever you need it.”

He nods, winces as he starts to sit up. You steady him with an arm around the waist. (You like the feel of it. You want to do more of that. You want a lot of things you didn’t know you wanted, things you don’t quite understand yet.)

For a minute you both sit cross-legged, knees against knees. He sits up straighter, stretches with arms overhead, and you can hear his spine pop. The bottom of his sweater rides up, and for just a second a sliver of sooty skin is visible, looking all soft and squishable. He glares at you. Fuck. Busted.

“Take a picture, it’ll last longer.”

“Dude that one is so old, did you steal that from a nineties high school movie? Also you don’t let me take pictures of you.”

“I’ll make an exception.”

“Whoa, seriously?” Your heart is in your throat, holy fuck, an actual photo of Karkat not snuck while he was engrossed in a book or a movie, or half asleep? What an idea.

“Just one.” He holds up a finger. “And I’m not doing any weird poses. And I have the right to request a do-over.”

“Okay, okay, wow, yes, hold on, let me just,” you fumble out your phone, pull up the camera with shaking hands. “Okay, uh.”

And… fuck, now that he’s offering it to you, you have no idea what to ask for. He said no weird poses, so presumably that means nothing too sensual. You get it, he’s not into that, totally fine. But asking him to do something in particular, it just seems so staged, so fake, a cheap knockoff that could never hope to compare to the real thing.

“This _is_ a limited time offer, Dave.”

“Fuck, wait, I just. I don’t want it to be posed or anything.”

He quirks a brow at that.

“I mean, I just want it to be… you. Just, you. That’s all I want.” Your face goes hot, maybe that wasn’t the right way to say it, but his expression softens and you…

You go for it. Lean in quick to kiss him on the lips, and snap the immediate aftermath with record speed. Fuckin’ nature photographers got nothing on you. Capturing a hummingbird in flight is nothing compared to getting a blissed-out Karkat on film. You check the photo, hope to god it came out right, and _oh_.

“ _Oh._ Oh my god. Oh my god Karkat look at this.”

The Karkat in the picture has his brows raised in surprise, but his eyes droop loose and relaxed, head tilted lazily to the side, a thumb brushing across his slightly parted lips, and it’s. It’s the most perfect thing you’ve ever seen.

“I look like a fucking doofus,” he groans.

“No, no, I’m not deleting it, this is. This is beautiful. I need to frame this. Oh god I need to figure out how to get this printed and framed. This is going in my wallet. If I had a wallet, I mean—”

“Dave… stop messing around. Just for a second, please?” His voice is soft and serious and… pitiful.

“What? I’m not… what makes you think I’m messing around?” He doesn’t believe you, doesn’t believe that someone could think those things about him, and fuck, there’s another feeling too big to deal with right now. “I’m not joking, this is great, you’re so…” Your mouth doesn’t let you finish that thought. (He’s so… a lot of things, and you’re not brave enough to say any of them.)

You’re honestly expecting a little more resistance, but he’s just… looking at you, and looking at the picture, and back at you, and down at himself, with this confused-hurt expression and.

“I don’t get it,” he says, burying his head against your shoulder. “You can keep it, but. I don’t think I’ll ever get it.” He sniffles a little. Oh, _Karkat_. You pet his hair, put your phone down and wrap both arms around him.

“Hey, it... it’s okay,” you say. “You don’t have to get it.” He sniffs again. “I mean, there’s… a lot I don’t get. But maybe that’s okay, for now? Maybe we can just. Not get it, together.”

“Yeah,” he says wetly. “Yeah.” He leans back, wipes his face with his sleeve. “Sorry. That was a dumb freakout. I’m dumb. Let’s just pretend that didn’t happen.”

A couple beats of silence pass before you say:

“Do you wanna, like, get out of here?”

“Oh my god I thought you’d never ask. This room is fucking gross.”

“It’s not _that_ bad,” you insist. “The lighting is kind of romantic.”

“Ugh.” He rolls his eyes as he heaves himself off the floor and yanks you up by the wrist. “Let’s just go.”

“Will you carry me back?” you ask, leaning against him with an exaggerated pout. He shoves you lightly.

“Abso-fucking-lutely not.”


End file.
